It relates to when Sally Magnusson did a "Songs of Praise" religious broadcast from the Calais refugee camp.
You'll remember that the Daily Mail nearly burst into flames on the newsagents' shelves at the thought of the BBC wasting money going to France (they probably spat at the mere mention of the word France) to do a Christian programme from a place where there is a considerable amount of human suffering.
(I mean, what would Jesus have done in the circumstances...called them a swarm, like the UK's unbeloved prime minister, or advocated more drowning, because they are cockroaches, like tabloid Z-list "celebrity" Katie Hopkins.)
But the above paragraph makes a good point.
In the course of any day, the BBC on any one of its dozens upon dozens of channels, conducts hundreds if not thousands of interviews with politicians and members of the public, with never a warning that it's just possible that something one of their interviewees said may not be 100% true (Alistair Carmichael, to take an example out of thin air), and that the BBC can't verify it.
It's strange that the only time that the BBC feels it necessary to point out that they can't provide documentary evidence of veracity is when it comes from a refugee.
++++++++++
It will be comforting, or otherwise) to readers of the New International stable of papers that Ms Brookes is to return as their chief executive.
During her last tenure there (before her £16 million pay off) she oversaw, apparently without seeing anything at all, or indeed ever wondering where all the information her papers were printing was coming from, some of the monst intrusive and illegal phone hacking and paying off of police and various other sources.
The English justice system found her to be totally innocent of doing anything wrong. She knew nothing about the criminal behaviours of her key staff including Andy Coulson, who went to prison for his part in it.
I'd have said that that showed an incredible incompetence in someone in her position whose fingers should have been on the button at all times.
She sounds like the kind of person who would need supervising if they were making a cup of tea. Still, it will be open day for anyone on the staff wanting to do a bit of fiddling or cheating. She clearly won't have a the vaguest notion of what's going on.
It's a great life, though, if you are in with the right people.
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So, to cut a long story short here.
ReplyDeleteIn order to rise to the top of the world of journalism you need to be:
1) Deaf
2) Dumb
3) Blind
4) Gormless
5) an Airhead
6) Brain dead or Brain less!
7) best mates with Dave baby
8) a Liar
9) a Red head (note to Munguin I am a former red head ;-) )
10) have a few quid in the bank (unlike majority of folks!)
I think the best mates with Dave helped out, and of course best mates with Rup!
DeleteOne has the power to make things happen and the other has the money to make things happen.
A powerful combination when the chips are down.
Don't be so hard on the woman!
ReplyDeleteShe didn't get a seat in the HOL as she'd expected, instead she's got to work for creepy ol' Murdoch again. She must be spittin' blood that Mone got to jump the queue!
May yet happen!
DeleteI really do avoid speaking or commenting about this situation of migration. However you need to be careful reporting stats. The Germans get lots of asylum applications, but the overwhelming majority of those from places like Albania and Serbia for instance, are rejected. Those people ARE then deported. The UK has a really bad reputation for not deporting those who are not regarded as genuine asylum seekers.
ReplyDeleteI have every sympathy for people fleeing middle eastern disasters - created in part by our own war criminals as yet uncharged. I have every sympathy for people who figure its better to escape grinding poverty and go to Europe to do some crappy job the locals don't want to do. In the same circumstances I would do it myself.
However, mass immigration reduces wage growth. It overwhelms the housing stock and the provision of public services. And above everything else, those who subscribe to the religion of peace frequently do not want to integrate into western society. Indeed they cause such a fuss that arguably, a large section of the pre-existing population would prefer if they were not here at all. That is the tightrope all our politicians walk.
Perhaps the solution is a system of non permanent right to remain, within set, reviewable time limits, and with the absolute certainty that as soon as their original country is deemed safe, they must go home. Some places will be unstable for a long time, but "safe countries" do emerge from conflict zones. But we must have confidence that our authorities will enforce the rules meticulously. I suspect that many people do not believe that to be the case at present.
Oh, I'd not say it was easy, Anon. It's very difficult.
DeleteWhat I'm saying, however, is if the head of state and the head of the UK/English government are going to batter our ears about how Christ's teachings guides their every move, the least they could do is to try to show some Christian compassion.
As for people coming here and fitting in, you make perfectly valid points, but 'd say two things.
First, Brits didn't exactly do their best to fit in wherever they went. In fact, let's be honest, they demanded everything be changed to suit them from the language to the culture.
And secondly, when a lot of immigrants started to arrive here, after the war, undoubtedly to fill the gaps left by the vast number of ordinary people who had been killed in that war, they were shunned. Even had they wanted to fit in they weren't allowed to. They were not welcomed; they were treated as second class. No one wanted an immigrant in their street lest it reduce the value of their property. Maybe Brits could have been a little more welcoming adn inclusive.
Mass immigration is blamed for wage stagnation, but I remember working for the jobcentre before Eastern Europeans had the right to move and work in Scotland, and in Dundee there was a tiny Pakistani population, nearly all of which worked in their own businesses.
But wages were dirty low here anyway. Blair had just introduced a minimum wage, and almost every single job we had advertised in jobcentre was at that wage or pennies above it. You really couldn't live on it.
Students from Aberdeen or Edinburgh laughed their socks off when we said £3,60 an hour.
Wages were already depressed. We didn't need immigrants to do it for us.
Your idea is not a bad one. Indeed I understand that some immigrants do return home when things improve, but getting the Home Office in London to record ins and outs is probably wishing upon a star. The Home Office must be the world's most inefficient organisation.
I think we need to make a start on the people smugglers that are operating the scams to bring people here, and we must look to see what we can do to help Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey... which are totally swamped with Syrian and Iraqi refugees. What is it doing to them and their wages and economy. Britain keeps bragging about being a big shot. Time the money went where the mouth is. Christian and Important. They should be taking a lead. (I'd suggest we ask the Chinese to hep deal with the people smugglers. They were pretty neat on pirates.)
Afghanistan is returning to chaos, so be prepared for more people from there.
It's not easy, and I wouldn't like the job of sorting it out, so at least some sympathy goes out to the hapless May and tosser Cameron, but I just wish they would stop ranting about their Christian principles to try to buy votes, while they behave in nothing like Christian ways.
I'm not a Christian, but if I were I'd be bloody annoyed about my religion's name being used like that.
There is a problem with those who arrive with an adherence to a misogynistic, homophobic, exclusive cult.
ReplyDeleteYou mean like UKIP people, the BNP, the Orange Order and half the Tories?
DeleteGood one, (smiley face)
DeleteI find the ideologies of the BNP, the OO and many members of UKIP as offensive as you. I also find the ideology of Islam, which sanctions the physical chastisement of women and the execution of gays and apostates offensive.
DeleteWell, I find most religions have dictates that are repulsive. That's why I couldn't possibly follow one. The extreme of any religion is abominable.
DeleteAgreed. Unfortunately, the physical chastisement of women and the execution of gays is very much mainstream. It is enshrined in Islamic law (Sharia). Sharia courts provide the law of the land in every Muslim country and are on the increase in the West. This evil needs to be confronted from the left and not left to the ranting of xenophobes.
DeleteThe practices of some countries should be condemned but to say they are Muslim and only Muslim by inference is racist bigotry. At least two 'Christian 'countries in n.Africa have high levels of f.g.m. Sadly my memory fails me at this moment as names (low blood sugar? ) and this problem exists throughout Central Africa. Remember one of 'our friends' is Saudi Arabia and Muslim!
DeleteBang on Picture Works
DeleteFundamentalist Christians are just as intolerable as Fundamentalist Muslims.
Lest we should forget, we had 30+ years of Christians doing battle with each other in Ireland, part of Dave's United Kingdom.
We voted No so life goes on for the Elite.
ReplyDeleteIt certainly does.
DeleteApparently Tony Blair offered her help too...
tris
ReplyDeletePersonally I am a bit of a bigot on immigration even though some / many of
them i have worked with i found to be honest hardworking funny kind people
who i really liked.
But they take jobs houses health resources from uk citizens and worse
opportunities from our young citizens. I say citizens regardless of ethnicity
religion or place of birth and i know many of them feel the same as me.
So the open door policy has no support from me......we should look at
the problem at source their homelands and what is driving them out and
use enough resources whatever the cost to make their lives better at home.
My only thought is people dont seem to understand these immigrants are going
ReplyDeletethrough unimaginable pain and suffering for a belief a vision of a different better future.
Unless they have a different idea on how they can have happy life in their own
home lands. nothing will stop them not even the certainty of death on the road to
Jerusalem .
You cannot fight an idea with dry unemotional facts as recent history within
Scotland shows.
Whose facts? Project fears?
DeleteNiko. I hear what you are saying. More people, more expense. And already we cannot feed and house the people we have, born here. It occurs to me that one of the reasons people want to come here is that our governments tell the world how incredibly successful we are as a country. They never mention the poverty, hunger and deaths from malnutrition.
DeleteThere are so many sides to the argument, I don;t deny it, and to dismiss your comments as bigotry (as you did) would be to miss some really important points.
But in the immediate future the first concern has to be, as you mentioned in your second post, the realisation of the incredible pain and misery that these people are going through.
Of course for them the best solution is to try to sort out the disorder in their own countries. In so many cases it was caused in the first place by us. So many of these people are coming form Libya which is now a pretty lawless state.
Qadaffi might have been a pretty terrible man, but at least he held the place together, until we decided to get rid of him (which was ironic really considering that Blair had used him as a perfect example of a dictator coming in from the cold and being embraced by Britain and America).
If I were Libyan and I had kids, I'd be trying anything to get out of there now.
Afghanistan is retreating into disorder; Iraq was left lawless and unprotected and a breeding ground for terrorists and Islamic militants.
Our interventions only make things worse. But we have to find a way of helping. Until recently refugees were piling into Lebanon and Jordan, but these countries just can;t take any more.
We're supposedly the rich deputy runners of the world. We have to do something for them.
As I said in my post, the thing that annoys me most is the pap that the likes of the Queen and Cameron spout about Great British values and Christian values, which are followed by a total refusal to help.
All I'd say is that if it members of the Queen's family or Cameron's family, or indeed Blair's or Burnhams, that was being washed up on the beaches, there would be a sudden outbreak of real Christian charity...ie they would be doing something sharpish.
We... not Scotland, not Britain, not Europe, can;t take people from all over Africa and the Middle East, even if we have been responsible in part for their plight, but we need to do more than call them cockroaches and swarms...
Maybe all these expensive new aristocrats can earn their £300 a day tax free, by working out what we can do.
(That last suggestion was a joke, of course. Most of the new intake into the House of Scroungers haven't sufficient wit to think past how to claim their expenses, drink the upper class champagne, snort powder in bras with prostitutes and make the most of their mediaeval titles.)
DeletePoverty, homelessness,food banks,low pay, all are the result of this government and its predecessor who gave the Tories all the ammunition they needed to destroy the economy and direct all moneys to the rich. Refugees did NOT create these conditions. We are also constantly told we have an ageing population (more cuts,pensions,disability) and we lack core skills. Germany with fewer of these ' benefits ' of Great Britain ' has taken more refugees in a day than ' great ' Christian Britain will in a year and solved its skill shortages in all fields and ageing problems. Recently I have been in hospital- 2 consultant one a 'foreigner, nurses- Nigerian,Slovac,English. Cleaners- African, Norwegian, doctors- Asian scot ,African, Muslim ( which country I don't know,or care ) , Scots, English, and more others in support staff. This is the NHS pride of GB,under attack by privatisation. Not threatened by immigrants but held together by them ! Bring refugees here( Scotland) and welcome .
ReplyDeleteHear hear.
Delete